2016 Chevrolet Colorado Duramax Diesel: First Drive

Chevy put a small Duramax diesel engine under the hood of its Colorado to create a 30 mpg fuel-sipping pickup that can tow toys, horses and just about anything else. It’s a hard working truck disguised as a cruiser.

What is it: 2016 Chevrolet Colorado 2.8L Duramax, four-door, turbodiesel midsize pickup truck.

Price as tested: $38,995.

Competitors: Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Frontier, and even full-size beasts like the Ford F-150 and its brother the Chevrolet Silverado.

Alternatives: Ram 1500 EcoDiesel, a team of Budweiser Clydedales

Pros: Real towing ability in a smaller, user-friendly package. Good fuel economy when not towing.

Cons: Not cheap, some chintzy interior pieces, not as stable while towing as a larger truck.

Would I buy it with my own money? If I needed to tow regularly, I’d buy one of these instantly.

There’s engineering and then there’s intuition. Design a truck by intuition and you’ll wind up with something that “looks right” and passes every “rule of thumb” test, but it might kill you. Meanwhile, leave a truck’s design completely up to the engineers and you’ll wind up with something safe, durable and triply redundant reliable, but not necessarily something you’d want to be seen in. Then there’s the new 2016 Chevrolet Colorado Duramax Diesel. It’s a truck that, engineers know, makes intuitive sense.

In other words, it looks right. And it is right.

In a real way, the diesel Colorado is merely America getting a taste of the same dependable goodness the rest of the world has long been enjoying. Small diesel pickups are the backbone of developing economies across the planet. They aren’t trucks for beach hopping or advanced picnicking, but the beasts of burden that keep markets supplied with goods and farms feeding the masses. Here in North America we use our trucks to do some work and then play. In most of the world, they work to keep people alive and they work them until they collapse.

The Colorado diesel, and its near twin the GMC Canyon diesel, are effectively the first mid-size pickups optimized for towing. Think of these twins as bite-size haulers that, when not towing, are fine every day driving companions that fit easily into most garages, are compact enough to parallel park without using berthing tugs, and can haul home every imaginable beach toy. And the tailgate is low enough even for old dogs to jump into the bed.

The Duramax package will be available on Colorados and Canyons with two- or four-wheel drive and with both extended and crew cab bodies.

What makes this Colorado is the Duramax 2.8-liter turbodiesel four-cylinder engine under its hood. Built at a plant in Rayong, Thailand, the Duramax four is constructed around a tall cast iron block with dual overhead cam heads operating four valves per cylinder. With its 16.5:1 compression ratio, variable vane turbocharger, charge intercooler, and common rail direct fuel injection it’s as modern as any diesel available to the general public. Emissions? There’s no apparent VW-style cheating going on. The Duramax uses urea injection to scrub out nitrogen oxides, and it’s legal in all 50 states.

While the Duramax is rated at only 181 hp, it also produces a thick 369 lb-ft of torque at a mere 2,000 rpm. That means there’s plenty of low-end grunt on hand to get a big boat moving out of the water and up a slippery ramp. It means that while Colorado is cruising at freeway speed with a trailer behind it that there’s power available to climb a hill without the standard six-speed automatic transmission dropping more than two gears.

To put that 369 lb-ft of twisting force in perspective, that’s 100 lb-ft more than the peak torque of the 3.6-liter V6 that’s the most powerful gas engine available in the Colorado. And it’s 104 lb-ft more than the peak torque offered by Toyota’s available 3.5-liter gas-fired V6 in the new 2016 Tacoma pickup. It’s even 39 lb-ft more than what the standard 4.6-liter V8 in the larger, 2016 Tundra pickup offers.

All that ability raises the two-wheel drive Colorado’s tow rating from 7,000 to 7,700 lbs. The 4x4 Colorado Duramax can lug 7,600 pounds. Short of towing things like massive cabin cruisers, or several cars, that’s plenty. It’s more than enough for most travel or horse trailers..

But it’s not just the Duramax 2.8’s grunt that impresses. Using twin counter rotating steel balance shafts down in the oil sump, the Duramax four is perfectly mannered despite its large displacement and compression ignition. That smoothness advantage is further pushed by a “centrifugal pendulum vibration absorber” (CPVA) stuffed into the transmission’s torque converter, using sprung masses to tamp down any vibrations not caught by the engine’s balance shafts. Altogether, the Duramax 2.8 is a state of the art, lusciously torque-laden turbodiesel.

Without a trailer, the Colorado Duramax is likely the easiest diesel pickup truck available in North America with which to live. Unlike full-size pickups this compact—OK, mid-size—pickup snicks through traffic with grace, is easy to park and fits into virtually anyone’s garage. Like all Colorados, the Duramax rides beautifully, handles well and it’s interior is logically laid out. The Duramax 2.8 is powerful enough to keep up with traffic even if its 0-60 mph time of more than 10 seconds means it will lose most stop light drag races to well-driven hybrids.

Empty and driven carefully, the Colorado Duramax should return as much as 30 mpg on the highway. That’s better than the available gas V6, but not so good on its own as to make the additional expense of the Duramax package economically sensible.

There are hiccups in the quality of the Colorado’s interior materials, and one pet peeve is that the door pockets won’t hold a lot of personal electronics, but this is clearly the best mid-size pickup on the market. The Duramax makes it even better.

The great oily virtues of the Duramax are most apparent when towing. With a 4,000-pound horse trailer behind it, the Colorado diesel practically danced up the steep Nojoqui grade that rises along the 101 freeway in California’s Santa Barbara County. It’s not like it was going to pass everything else on the road while tugging a trailer, but its confidence was almost intoxicating. Much of the credit also goes to the poised performance of the 6L50E six-speed automatic transmission that is smart enough to hold a gear when it should hold a gear and up shift when the opportunity is undeniable.

On the back side of the grade, the Duramax’s compression braking came into play and allowed easy management of downhill speed without over-using the brakes. This isn’t a classic “Jake Brake” system with all the clatter that implies, but it uses the variable vane turbocharger to accumulate exhaust back pressure to slow the rig effectively. There’s a bit of that Jake Brake sound, but it’s subdued and somehow re-assuring.

The Colorado diesel can replace half-ton pickups under most towing conditions. In fact in most towing situations, it’s a better towing solution than those big behemoths that can be a chore to pilot around town when they’re not towing anything at all.

Since the Duramax package adds $3,730 to the price of the Colorado, the gas-fired V6 and four-cylinder versions will still be a better deal for most buyers who don’t need the towing prowess. And that bump in price may see plenty of better-equipped Colorado Duramax trucks arriving at dealers wearing $40,000 or more price tags. But this pickup has talents its competitors don’t. And there’s going to be some truck guy cachet that comes with that Duramax badge too.

Compared to how these small pickups are treated in the rest of the world, the Colorado diesel trucks here will likely lead easy lives. But if they need to do some serious work, the ability is there.